Afternoon Palate Cleanser: Gay Bathhouse Music

"Mockingbird Dream," a newly released disco track from San Francisco electronic musician Patrick Cowley, has just gotten unearthed and given a video, thanks to the garage-diving work of local DJs Honey Soundsystem. Basically, Cowley was a talented dude who was an early victim of AIDS, doing some great work with Sylvester (like "Do You Wanna Funk") and producing moody, sexy instrumental music like this, which would have been played in S.F. bathhouses of the seventies, and also was used as the soundtrack for some gay porn of the day. It's notable enough that NPR is streaming the whole album, School Daze, on their website.

This track was originally part of a suite of three that were used as background music for Fox Studios early 80s porn flick School Daze, and it epitomizes what Cowley coined "the San Francisco sound." And yep, it sounds dark and dirty.